sowing brassicas

Started white cabbage, red cabbage, savoy, cauliflower and broccoli indoors.

Also got a few cells of 6 different lettuce varieties, some dwarf marigolds, dwarf asters, cape gooseberry and fennel started.  Marigold always takes a long time to germinate for me, so I'll see what happens.  

The germination for spinach was really spotty. I'll probably toss it in about a week if nothing else shows up.  Searches online show that presprouting the seed first helps, but I'll hope that the fall sown spinach makes it.  The leeks are starting to peek out, and the celeriac as well.  Still nothing from the parsley, but the seed was about 2 years old, so it might have not been viable.  Also nothing from the garlic chives, I think it may have been too warm on the radiator.  Eggplants are poking through and peppers as well.  The Jalapenos seem to be the slowest, I am not sure if they just need longer or if the seed was too old.  I'll give them another week as well.

first sowing of the year

I have procrastinated seed starting long enough!  It was such a daunting task with the lack of light, space and time I have right now.  But on Feb 20th, the season got underway with sowings of leeks, green onions, celeriac, parsley, some spinach(an experiment to see if spring transplants work better than direct sowing) and rocket/arugula.  They are on the radiator for now and the rocket has already germinated 2 days later!  Better get the light situation under control.

oops, already reaching

I also have eggplant and peppers planted, as these have always taken a long time to germinate for me.
This week I hope to get broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbages underway as well as cape gooseberries. 

generalversammlung

We RSVPd to the Annual General Assembly meeting, thinking we would probably be one of few people there. We thought it would be good to go considering this is our first year as a member and we don't want to seem like slackers.  Boy were we wrong!  We walked into a room with about 300 people (it turns out that there was a free dinner following and free food lures college students and retirees alike!).  After a short lecture about earthworms and then a summary of last years happenings, we got to vote on everything from next year's budget to changes in the by-laws.  It was interesting, considering I only understood about half of what was going on due to prevalence of Swiss-German.  Dinner, conversation, and Folk music + old people dancing followed.  The relatively younger people at our table informed us that this was about as Swiss as it gets, which was interesting to experience considering how much the Swiss tend to keep to themselves.  Conversation was entertaining to say the least and consisted of me smiling and nodding a lot as well as responding to questions with ambiguous answers. (its hard to know if you are supposed to react positively or negatively when you don't understand the question, so ambiguous is the way to go...)  A local nursery 'sponsored' the table and stage decorations for the event, which were, of course, live flowering plants.  We were told that each family was allowed one to take home and we managed to snag a lovely orange-red rose to take home.  I'll have to find a good spot for it next spring. 

Freak winter cold front

Well, so much for the unseasonably warm winter we have been having.  Enter one of the worst cold fronts in recent European history.  Our highs have been about -5 C for the last week, and nighttime lows about -20 C.  This is supposed to continue for another week (update it lasted for 3 weeks) or so.  The only bright side (for the people) is that it has been relatively dry, which means safer travel whether by car, bike or foot.  I am sure my plants would appreciate the snow cover though.  I am sure that remaining pak choi and mizuna is long gone update they are looking yellow and ratty but hanging on, and I hope that the bulbs, tricked into early growth by the warm weather, make it through this cold spell. 

In other news, the balcony, which I use as a refrigerator in the winter months has turned into a deep freeze.  (Every inch is prime real estate in Europe! no space to be wasted on a large fridge)  Does anyone have ideas for frozen kimchi and frozen heads of cabbage?

I hope spring is on on it's way, so the excitement and planting madness can begin!

january update

It has been pretty cold, rainy and snowy this whole month.  Not too much growing right now.  The spinach, mizuna and pak choi is holding on, but it is so small it is not worth harvesting, I'll see if it makes it through the winter as an experiment.  The daffodils we planted last fall are starting to peek through and I have found a few other mystery plants coming up, very excited to see what spring brings!

There hasn't been too much gardening work going on, although we have been taking our compost up every week and on a walk though the forest discovered that the city was removing some older trees!  We found one pile of "mulch" from the sawing (got distributed on the berries) and another of pine stems ( I am going to try them around the strawberry plants we planted last fall to see if the sharp needles deter slugs).  So needless to say, we went back, grabbed our bikes and some large bags and filled up on some free, carbon neutral mulch!

Also, it appears after some research that our last frost free date is May 15th, later than I had thought, so I will be adjusting the seed starting accordingly.  Also our latitude is about the same as Seattle and shares a similar rainy and cool summer climate, so any tips from western gardeners welcome!

I think we have all the basic seeds we want in order, but I am looking forward to my next trip to the US so I can order some specialty seeds (especially Mexican chile varieties and Asian veggies).  Most of the US seed companies don't deliver here, and I haven't found a good supplier for interesting varieties here yet.